The available means of motherhood : writing, resistance and childrearing behind bars

My dissertation, “The Available Means of Motherhood: Writing, Resistance and Childrearing Behind Bars,” focuses on various acts of writing in which incarcerated mothers not only (re)claim their right to motherhood and literacy, but, in doing so, (re)define what it means to be a capable and loving mother. Incarcerated mothers, who are largely poor and of color, recognize the need to improve their writing skills; at the same time, the fact of their imprisonment makes it difficult for them to do so. Responding to a call for literacy studies to investigate how and why marginalized groups improve their literacy skills, my dissertation examines the sacrifices incarcerated mothers make to become literate, the rhetorical moves they make to resist normativity, and the negotiations they make in order to tell their stories. Through my work in the prisons themselves as well as my research in the American Prison Writing Archive, I conduct a detailed analysis of these women's letters and poems, their narratives of crime, pain and identity, and their appeals to parole boards. My analysis reveals that these writers continue to develop literacy practices so that they can write through their trauma, demand change, produce counterstories about their incarceration, and establish relationships both inside and outside of prison. My dissertation offers a criterion for how mothers outside the white hegemonic archetype of motherhood use writing to (re)claim their right to motherhood and literacy.